Dawnland (Book 1): Pockets of the Dead

by Karen Carr

October 31st

  Green, Oval Park Place

  Haverlyn Village

  I spent a week and a half in Ned and Mark’s apartment, eating the food that wasn’t spoiled and starting to feel better. The bite had almost healed, but had left a bright red imprint of Matt’s teeth in my hip—something to remember him by. Once again I was out of food and it was getting colder, so I knew that I had to find an apartment on the green that was powered by solar. Knowing that I had some kind of immunity to zero bites gave me more confidence, but this time I decided to go out at night.

  Haverlyn Village’s Oval Park Place had the look and feel of a classic village main street. It had wide sidewalks, rear alleys, a corner market and a movie theater. Two and three storied buildings housed shops, restaurants, and residences surrounding a village green and a parking lot. The green, itself, was lined with hedges and had a covered stone stage at one end. There was a church across the street from the stage, near the entrance to the village, and a fitness studio, health spa, and doctors and dentists offices as well.

  There were two buildings at the top of the oval that were entirely residential lofts. They were also converted to solar last year, and one of them, 500 Oval Park Place, was my targeted new address. Before I left Mark and Ned’s, I packed everything that I thought would be useful into Ned’s high sierra mountain backpack, including Mark’s wallet. I slipped over to my apartment to gather all of the research I had done and some additional clothing.

  By my calculations, there was a small window of time where my path would be clear of undead migrations. I waited until it was dark and crossed Ned’s body for the third and final time. Clouds covered the sky, making it so dark that it was hard to see the steps down. I dared not turn on the flashlight I brought with me, and regretted my decision to leave in the dark. I always seemed to be making the wrong decisions. I would never get this new life right.

  I crept along the dark stairs slowly. The further down I got, the more it stunk of rotting flesh. The smell almost made me barf, but I kept going. Once I was at the base of the stairs, I turned down the street which leads to the green and the center of the village. There, in the distance, bright globes of light illuminated the area. The street lights around Oval Park Place were on. They must have been solar powered. I was at once anxious and excited with this new revelation and picked up my pace.

  I made it past the underground garage and up to the oval without seeing any movements. There were lots of cars in the street, like people deserted them quickly—either turning into undead themselves or running away to be eaten. I saw remnants of flesh everywhere, but all of it was blackened with age. There were no fresh kills. When I looked up at 500 Oval Park Place, I saw lights on in the second and third floor windows. There was power. With power came warmth, hot water, microwave cooking. My stomach growled in anticipating a meal of popcorn and soup, both of which I had with me.

  The green in the middle of the oval was about 300 feet long and thirty feet wide and lined with large bushes, too large for me to see over except for the stone stage at the south end. I now had to walk the entire stretch to arrive at my destination to the North. Some businesses had decorated early for the Halloween scarecrow contest, and those ghastly looking creations were still up. It made my solo walk in the glow of the street lights ever so more terrifying.

  As soon as I started walking past the green, I heard several gargled groans from over the hedge. By the hyped noise I could tell that they were very excited. I didn’t think these creatures would be able to smell me through the already powerful odor of decaying flesh in the air, but they must have known I was there. Suddenly, several bushes shook and splintered before me, and then a hand and arm popped out in one place, and a leg and a torso in another.

  Ditching my large backpack, I was going to make a run for the building when I spotted a dozen more zeroes coming from between the buildings. How could I be so stupid to think that I would be able to get away from these things? My undead immunity wouldn’t help me from being torn to shreds like confetti.

  The beasts from the bushes had made their way through. I turned to try and run back to my apartment, but more zeroes were coming up the street that way. I decided to bolt through the bushes, into the green and to the stone stage. The covering of the stage was held up by crisscrossed steel girders, which I was sure the zeroes couldn’t climb; I only hoped that I could.

  I made it through the bushes and into the green, which was the biggest mistake of my life. There was a zero party going on. They were everywhere. And while the party must have been really dull before I arrived, once they saw me they became ecstatic. The guest of honor had made her entrance.

  The zeroes surrounded me. Within seconds they would be upon me. They were going to split me into a hundred pieces. There was no way I was going to escape. A thousand pictures of my family flashed through my head. I screamed out to no one, collapsed on the ground and covered my face. That’s when I heard a strange popping noise, more like mini explosions going off all around me, and felt wet bits of flesh hit my clothes.

  I raised my head and saw that the zero nearest to me, maybe fifteen feet away, had fallen to the ground. A gooey substance trickled out of his eyes, his mouths, and his ears. A dozen more zeroes came toward me, but they never could reach me. Their heads exploded and they dropped to the ground like marionettes whose strings were cut. They were dead. Like not undead-dead. Dead-dead.

  Zeroes kept dying in front of me; their heads exploding like it was the fourth of July. The pile of dead bodies formed a circle around me. It was so high, that I couldn’t see over it from my sitting position, so I stood up. More were coming. They must have heard the racket, and they kept dying. Twenty, thirty, forty feet away from me, they were dying. Soon, there were no more live zeroes in my sight.

  I must have picked up some kind of strange anti-virus virus that radiated from my body like an aura. I couldn’t contain my excitement. I would never have to be scared of zeroes again. I would be able to save the world—what there was left of it.

  Chapter 4: Welcome To My World

  November 12th

  501 Oval Park Place

  Haverlyn Village

  The apartment I chose was on the third floor of 500 Oval Park Place, with a great view of the green and surrounding area. The best part about the view was that there were no live zeroes in it, and the best part of the apartment was that it had electricity, which meant there was heat, plumbing, and food in the freezer, including ice-cream.

  The person who lived in the apartment had furnished it with white leather, a telescope overlooking the green, and lots of abstract art work. It would be the perfect place to spend the winter, which made me wonder where Stan and Saudah would be spending the cold months, and if they were still alive. If more people had contracted the same zero-killing virus, then there was hope for humanity.

  The last few days I had been doing some zero-killing-aura experiments. I wanted to determine the strength of my virus. The kill-zone had grown rapidly over the first two days, but had stopped at about 1000 feet from where I stood. It travelled with me in a 1000 foot circle of death if I walked slowly, but if I ran the virus took a few long minutes to catch up to me. I imagined it as a giant invisible bubble and hoped it would never pop.

  November 14th

  700 Oval Park Place

  Pizza Adamo

  Haverlyn Village

  It took me a few days to devise a system to clean up the bodies. Pizza Adamo had a large stash of lighter fluid, lots of Ziploc bags and oven mitts, and a huge wood-burning fireplace, so it became my home base. I would never think of burning zeroes in the fireplace, it was just nice to have a crackling fire for warmth and atmosphere. It reminded me of the days when there were others here, laughing and drinking and enjoying a good pizza.

  My system to catalogue and burn the dead worked like this: I took a Ziploc bag and put any identifying contents, including car keys, house keys, and wallet, anything they had in their pockets, into the bag. Then,
I would label it on the outside with their place of death and a unique number. If they had a purse, or backpack, or other such big items, I would number and label those with the same identifier. I would then store the items in wooden cubbies in the back of restaurant.

  I thought about my friends and family all the time. I wanted to travel to Saudah’s house downtown as soon as I could, but my projects at home always interfered with my plans. I couldn’t force myself to leave the village, although I knew I was safe out of it. But, I didn’t know what else was out there, what else I would have to fight.

  I had cleaned up all of the bodies that were lying around Oval Park Place, which made the community look almost normal again—except for the fact that there were a bunch cars abandoned in the street and big scorch marks all over the place. I had found keys to some of cars, but moving them was not high on my priority list, getting rid of the dead was. I did take a Toyota pick-up and was able to maneuver it between the abandoned cars all the way around the oval. This helped when I had a particularly large task to do, like get rid of the bodies in the Church, which was next on my agenda.

  November 18th

  101 Oval Park Place

  Purefoy Church

  Haverlyn Village

  Today was the day I was going to evacuate the church. I had passed the massive stone structure many times before, always very swiftly because of the stench, but never wanted to start that cleanup project. The church was just too big and there were too many dead stuffed inside its hollow opening.

  The weather had begun to cool and had reached freezing the previous night. I was afraid that the bodies would freeze, like clumps of ice cubes stuck together. I wouldn’t be able to move them until spring and I didn’t want to stare at them all winter long, so I forced myself to do the work.

  The massive wooden doors were held open by a bunch of bodies piled high in the entryway and spread out like a fan from the entrance. The bodies, which were all mangled and twisted, were dressed in formal wear, including a woman in a fancy white wedding gown. The undead bridal party must have stayed close to the church, killing and milling about while the apocalypse unfolded around them.

  It would take a massive effort to catalogue the contents of all their pockets, so I brought a bunch of supplies in the pickup, including plenty of storage bags, gloves, a tarp and a shovel. The wind was chill, so I layered on the sweaters and covered my mouth with a scarf. The trees had shed all of their leaves, and covered the bodies with a light cover of foliage, making them look like part of the scenery.

  Thoughts of my life before the apocalypse stirred in my mind, leaf fights with my sister, Mi-Yung’s fluffy winter coat that made her look like a sheep, my brother’s tales of skiing adventures. I tried to push them out because they only served as reminders that I would be spending the holidays alone.

  I laid down my tarp, and piled a few bodies on it. I dug through their pockets when they weren’t ripped and placed the contents in a storage bag, labeling it with a big C for church. I began to hum and then sing, finding it helped time pass faster, as I zipped up wallets, and jewelry including rings, earrings and necklaces, and mints, and notebooks, and watches, and androids, and pens, and guns.

  The jewelry was the worst to retrieve, sometimes I had to rip the ears out, but I felt it important to keep. The guns were also scary because I didn't know how to tell if they were loaded or not and I didn’t know how to unload them if they were. After cataloging the first group of bodies, I dragged the tarp further into the street and rolled the bodies to where I would eventually burn them. I then went back to get more.

  I was carrying two heads of a man and a woman, the woman’s hair was long and easy to grip but the man’s was cropped short and felt like it was slipping from his scalp, when I heard the unmistakable sound of an exhaust from a motorcycle. I was so surprised to hear the noise that I didn’t think to drop the heads when I saw the bike approach.

  It was a very muddy Harley with a full set of saddlebags. The rider was wearing aviators, a black leather jacket, a rifle or a shotgun strapped to his back and something else, perhaps a pistol, strapped to his handlebar. He looked tough, but he didn’t scare me at all, mostly because he was human. How could I possibly be scared of another human, another life on earth? This was it. He was Adam to my Eve. He might possibly be the last man on earth and he had found me here.

  As he approached, his face became more distinctive and more beautiful. I wasn’t ruling out the fact that he could be a hallucination because he was so darn attractive. His face angled toward mine, but he didn’t register surprise. In fact, he didn’t register anything at all. He stopped the bike about twenty feet away from me and turned it off. He didn’t move from his seat, but placed his hand on the gun on the handlebar.

  I must have been a site with my scarf wrapped around my head, layers of sweaters and big working gloves. The goop from the heads I was holding hit the sidewalk in slow glops which spattered on my pants. I didn’t dare throw them because I wasn’t sure how he would react. He might think I was throwing them at him and his hand was very close to the trigger. Since he didn’t seem to be willing to make the first sound, I thought I should.

  “Hi,” I said. I tried to smile, but I was nervous and made three little grimaces instead.

  “Hi.” His voice had a strong mountain drawl. He smiled back at me with the most charmingly-crooked smile and perfect white teeth. I didn’t believe in love at first sight, but I hadn’t seen a living soul in weeks and that’s what I felt like. This man was my dream. “Need some help with that?” he asked, pointing to the dripping heads in my hands.

  He got off of his bike, rifle still strapped to his back, and walked toward me.

  “No, thanks,” I said. I threw the man’s head up onto the pile of twelve bodies that I had already collected, all that were in the doorway except for the bride.

  The dead man’s head rolled down the pile and into the stranger’s path. He diverted his attention to it for a split second and skip-stepped around it, then continued walking toward me.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “Bad aim.”

  “It’s alright,” he said, keeping one hand on his rifle, but thankfully it was still resting on his shoulder. “What are you doing here?”

  “Cleaning up the church.” I shrugged my shoulders like it was obvious. I didn’t know what else to say.

  He looked at the church, looked at the bodies and the bride, and then looked back at me with a furrowed brow. I wanted to ask him if he had a girlfriend, or if he wanted to get married, but I didn’t think the time was right. I wish I could get the idea of saving the human race out of my head, but I couldn’t help thinking of having this man’s babies. He was great breeding material for the next generation.

  “You sure you don’t need any help?” he asked, regarding the woman’s head in my hand, the pile of dead people, and the open church door. “There’s bound to be more in there that could surprise you.”

  “Nothing surprises me,” I said. He laughed a little too heartily. Obviously, I hadn’t convinced him. I laughed too.

  “I didn’t surprise you?” He smiled again, crooked and warm, making me feel like a real human being again. It was breathtaking. “You surprised me. I haven’t seen a sign of life in a hundred miles or so.”

  I considered telling him about my zero-killing aura, but I thought it best to keep that a secret. Who knows what the government would do with me if they found out about it. They might dissect me and feed be to lab rats. Of course, there might not be a government anymore, and then who knows where I would end up—in some kind of underground factory that would exploit me and beat me every day. I knew how things worked, I studied revolutions in college and it was never good for the side who lost.

  “You surprised me,” I admitted.

  “It looks like you have been busy killing zombies.” He regarded the giant pile of dead bodies and folded his arms across his chest. “I am mighty impressed.”

  There was disbelief in his
voice, like he didn’t think I was capable of such a feat. I had to tell him something. He came over, wrenched the woman’s head from my fingers and flung her on top of the heap, all the while holding my gaze through his aviators.

  “You going to burn them?” he asked.

  “When I’m done collecting them,” I said. I wiped the remaining goop from the heads on a cloth I had looped in my pants.

  “How many more in there?” He gestured toward the church with a smirk.

  “About fifteen, twenty maybe.”

  “All dead?” His tone was serious.

  “Yup,” I said.

  “You sure?” He unfolded his arms and unslung his rifle.

  “Yes, I’m sure. This place is zombie proof,” I said. I was so proud of myself for creating the best lie ever.

  “The church—zombie proof?” he asked. The smirk was completely gone now, in fact he seemed angry.

  “No, this town, this place. . .” I pointed to the green and made a circle to match Oval Park Place. “Those condos, those stores, everything here is zombie proof. Their heads explode if they come within 1000 feet of this place.”

  “We’ll see,” he said, aiming the rifle toward the open church doors. He disappeared into the church, and was gone so long that I went over to peek through the doors.

  “Hey,” I called out. My voice echoed in the hollow chamber, which still stunk like hell. It was such a pretty church, if you ignored the bodies draped over the pews, all stone and stained glass. It resembled a postcard from an old church in Scotland that I had taped to my wall at home. I had never been there. I had lots of postcards of places I wanted to visit. If travelling overseas seemed remote then, it was impossible now.

  He came down the stairs that led to the rectory. “Quiet,” he whispered, more like hissed at me. His light brown hair fell in his eyes and he brushed it away.

  “No,” I said, wondering how to convince him. “You don’t believe me? Watch this.” I stepped out into the middle of the church, cupped my hands over my mouth like a funnel and hollered, “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”